All in the Family featured the curmudgeonly Archie Bunker. Archie was television’s most famous grouch, blunt, blustering, straightforward and untouched by the PC crowd. He was the archetype of the conservative male. Michael desprately tried to reeducate him, but he persisted in his breviloquence.

Looking back at the last 40 years, we realize: ARCHIE WAS RIGHT!

7/18/2013

Slacking

My whole life I've been concerned with social issues and being a good citizen. I couldn't wait to turn 18 and vote. It was grown up, mature and responsible. That was how I saw myself, and how I wanted to be.

There aren't very many duties for a good citizen to preform. Yes you pay taxes, but that is designed to eliminate any chance of you not paying them. So you can't claim any civic virtue just because you fork over the cash. Voting is no longer relevant. Being informed doesn't make you a good voter, it makes you cynical. I'm past the age for military service, and I'd be 4F anyway, so that is out. The last remaining civic duty I can fill is jury duty.

I think I'd be a good juror. Good in the sense I'd stick to my guns and only vote according to what I believed to be morally right. I've been eligible for jury service more than half of my life, and I've never been called. This month I got the call. I went down and turned in my juror questioner and got myself a hardship deferral.

I hated doing it. I feel like a bad citizen. There was noting else I could have done, so I shirked my civic duty.

5 comments:

A deferral is part of the process, and designed to accommodate citizens who need it. You would only be shirking your civic duty if you didn't go down there at all, or got a deferral when you didn't need it.

Last time I got a notice for jury duty, I forgot which day it was. When I realized it one day too late, I immediately called the jury commissioner to find out what I had to do to make up for it. Turns out that my block of numbers was released from coming in that day, so I dodged a bullet there.

Had I not been released from going, that would have qualified as shirking one's duty, IMO, since I should have tracked the date closer.

I would have gladly went and served. The problem is that I took a night job so one of us would be home with the kids all the time. I'm home during the day and the wife is home at night. That means no one would be able to watch the kids. I'm told that child care is an automatic deferral and that it will be OK'd on the 1st.

Prior to having kids, I would have went in a heartbeat. Even now I want to go. The odds are against getting on a trial and then the odds of getting something half way interesting are very low. I guess I just want to say I did my part.